Your Heart: The Engine of Life

Today was the day for my yearly health check up at the office. I’ve been looking forward to it to see what improvements I’ve made during the last year with my workout. Employees lined up in front of various stations to get our weight and height, blood samples, EKG heart exams, and a Chest xray.

The lines were long and the aircondition was cold, but it was time to take care of our health. Everyone wanted to see how they were doing. Although these exams aren’t as comprehensive as the ones in hospitals where you can get the full checkup with ultrasounds and fitness tests, the basic preliminary tests are a great indicator.

It’s time for everyone to face the truth.

Although we won’t get results until next month, what results I know have been quite encouraging. My blood pressure is lower, and so is my heart beat. Since I can remember, my pulse has always been around 72. Today, my pulse was lower at 68.

I was happily surprised.

That means my heart beats 68 times per minute, 4 times less than before per minute. That’s a total of 240 minutes heart beats saved per hour and 5,760 beats saved per day. Per year that’s 2.1 million beats saved!! Wow.

If I keep this up, during my lifetime, my heart would have less usage and thus less wear, than if I had remained unhealthy!!

I’ve read that athletes who are in top form and extremely healthy have a pulse of only 49! Incredible isn’t it? I probably won’t ever get anywhere near that being as lazy as I am, but being in the sixties is good enough.

Thinking about it, your heart is like an engine that never stops working from the time you were conceived and formed. It never stops, never rests, never takes a break, but keeps on working even whilst you are sleeping.

It must be exhausted. The only time it gets to rest is when you have left this world.

If you take care of your heart well, maintain it and don’t overwork it, it’ll last a very very long time. However, if you are unhealthy, it’ll have to work double hard to keep all that blood pumping throughout the body, like a bagpipe that isn’t fully inflated. It can’t play all the notes at once.

Inflate your bagpipe to the full and look after that heart! 😀 You’ve only got one to last you throughout your entire life!